Pirate sites steal the music and make big money from Ads…

The Pirate sites who like to portray themselves as altruistic freedom fighters giving away musician’s songs without paying for them because they believe in the freedom of the internet are funding themselves with ads and raking in the money advertising things like dating agencies and online casinos – very revolutionary!

They have even formed a political Party, the Pirate party to promote their freedom of the internet ideology but seem to have missed out the Ads bit…

This is a long way away from the old school freedom fighter who fought for, er, freedom. The 21st century version of a ‘freedom fighter’ seems to be someone who makes a big noise about giving everything away for free on the internet and then raking the money in on their sites. None of this money goes back to the bands and musicians who are expected to not complain about thousands of pounds worth of work being stolen and given away before been given a smug answer about how the pirate sites are doing them a favour.

In the old days the bad guys were apparently the record labels who would give bands an advance and pay for their recording/promotion and touring- the modern model the pirates are replacing this with is that the band spends all their money recording stuff and the pirates steal it and give it all away and make loads of money from the ads that litter their sites and give none of it to the musicians and then get to form a political party to tell everyone that they are freedom fighters.

These days, with the help of established ad networks such as Doubleclick and Adsense, pirate sites are not only displaying ads for gambling and dating companies, but also ads for multinationals, including McDonald’s, Hyatt Hotels, Netflix and Ticketmaster.

It’s capitalism at its most bullying – the rich steal from the poor and then get to pretend they are doing them a favour.

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7 comments on “Pirate sites steal the music and make big money from Ads…”

All good points, especially the association of multinationals with the site, but does pass over the fundamental that the pirates are only half the story, and it’s the end user downloading from them that’s ultimately doing the damage; until these idiots wake up to the fact that what they are doing is no more justifiable than any other forms of theft, demand for pirate sites and the incentive for such operators to make money from them will remain.

All very valid points and a great piece. However there is a very simple reason why a lot of people grew up/have grown accustomed to downloading for free. Its basically because to buy anything off the internet you need a credit card (or for someone to give you an itunes gift card) unfortuantely if youre a kid you’re not allowed to legal have one till youre 18yrs old (there is a few exceptions if you have rich parents) which means kids were excluded from buying any music off the internet. They still want the music from their favourite artist so will naturally go to a site where they will be able to get it without having to put in details of a credit card they don’t/can’t possess. Ive been bashing my head against a wall for years with this (including explaining to the head of Sony that thats why it went tits up) but no one really wants to listen. Too late to change a lots of peoples habits now.

Jagz,
Good to hear from you mate!
I think we all know the horse bolted a long time ago but we don’t like having our faces rubbed in the dirt!
Everyone keeps talking about ‘new models’ and every label I know is struggling or going bust!

All good points I agree its wrong to steal music. Everyone is trying to shut down torrent sites but they are forgetting about youtube site, That site was created to broadcast yourself, upload your own personal home made movies, yet its full of music, game examples, full length movies ect all for free and it has advertisement so why is that site not being shut down? youtube also has an mp3 converter as well. I agree its wrong to download someones work with out paying a pennie for it but all that bull about musicians losing out on profit. Their album profit is divided by them, managers, promoters, sales, record labels, song writers ect they all get the bigger percentage while the singer/ band gets what ever is left over.

As founder and former leader of the Pirate Party UK, I’d like to balance your rant with a few facts. The Pirate Party UK manifesto does not advocate making money from file sharing, we only advocate non-commercial sharing. The total advertising revenue for http://www.pirateparty.org.uk is a grand total of £0.00, because we do not, and have never had any paid advertising on our site at all, no multinationals, no McDonalds, no Hyatt, no dating sites, no gambling, no Doubleclick, no Adsense and certainly no bloody Ticketmaster!

Now we’ve got our facts straight, am I the only one to find it just a tiny little bit hypocritical to complain about “raking in the money advertising things like dating agencies” right next to a big advert for MatureDatingUK?

Lastly, if there is (as you claim) “loads of money” to be made from ads on sharing sites, where are the ad-funded sites where musicians can choose to share their work and get rich from their cut of the advertising revenue?

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